Well let's say I wanted to try my hands on making a real world track, a karting one especially, and it was worth the effort but oh my, how much effort went to this ! And it was only a WS140 track and not a WS200 or WS255 !
But let me introduce Albi Kart Challenge, located in France, Tarn region.
- logo-albikartchallenge-hd-transparent-300px.png (59.22 KiB) Viewed 724 times
- Aerial view
- Drone view
- Albi Kart Challenge - In GR
I deleted it and reuploaded the track. Thanks to all who downloaded before.Made for Real karts carpack, Cadet category especially, from GR member Karting, to be found in the GR Database.
If you want some insights, feelings and tips about the making of my first real world track, it's just below behind spoilers if you want to read a little and want inspiration or encouragement if you want to try your hands on rwl tracks too.
Feel free to comment and wish you happy karting !
Why my spoiler don't work ... ?
[spoiler]The idea, the project and the big splash into the real world track making
First I had a clear idea in mind ; making a real world kart track because it's mostly flat, it's smaller than real circuits and there's a dire need of more high quality rwl kart tracks.
So I searched for some of them like Le Mans or Spa or even this crazy Dubai kartodrome but I wanted something simple and small to begin with. Better to finish something than beginning something too complex and never finish it.
Near my place there's Albi, known for its circuit, and there was a nice kart track in there so I chosed this one.
I took some aerial pics (thanks Google Maps), another more detailed pic (a drone one) and I watched a cockpit drive of the track to gather even more details.
I searched inspiration on GRIF too, with Maciej1's wonderful karting tracks, Glen's trick to make lmap cars especially, using cars from Lorenzo and Masa.
With those informations I was ready to start trackmaking.
Layout
Thanks to the aerial pic I was able to draw the layout with Gimp. I made the exterior lines (white line and tarmac line of 1 pixel large each. Some dithering on tarmac with one of my favorites brush : Grunge. The most tedious and long was to clean the lines (they're a little too big in Gimp with 1 pixel large) and to precisely put the starting lines as well. No Hmap as it's flat as a flat ironing board.
Environment
Very long and sometimes tedious to do but at the end it add all its charm to the layout. It really helps to have the aerial view to place precisely all the different elements of the surroundings, while the drone pic helped me to choose what kind of objects to use to represent these in Track Editor.
The drone pic really helped too knowing elevations and so to create Hmap with GRMHEdit. I was lucky there as there wasn't a lot of Hmap around.
Snake Editor is your savior for those sunk tires (those damn sunk tires ! had to remake them at least 3 times
), fences and curbed walls ; there's a bit of a learning curve but once you understand how to place objects it's fantastic how it's precise and well made. It can still be long though, but at the end the results are worth the efforts. Be careful to save it properly or you'll not have Hmap or have the starting layout of SnakeEditor, or pits in the middle of your track.For dithering in grass, mud, dirt etc same Grunge brush but I also like Sponge brush to make a more dispersed but still similar effect.
For the cars I play the track with a chosen car, put it in the desired place and take a screenshot. I copy the car and place it on my track in the same place to keep perspective, while reducing its size. Have to pixel draw to make a good lmap car but worth the effort again.
AI lines can be a little plainful to create but it's try and retry ; if the AI is cutting the corners, do the AI line further, and if the AI is too generous with you and corners, leaving a big space for you to overtake them, put it closer to corners. No need to redo all the AI line too luckily, as you can navigate along the line and delete what you want.
Final thoughts
Very happy of the result, and quite proud to had made a real world track in GR even if it's (only) a karting track, as it's quite a challenge with the limited number of objects at our disposal, the limited palette colors too.
So if I can do it, everyone can do it, with a bit of patience and planning.
It took me a little more than 2 days of freetime to create it.
Softwares used
Gimp (for Lmap), GRMHEdit (for Hmap obviously), TrackEditor (for AI lines, checkpoints, objects placement) and SnakeEditor (for objects placement exclusively)[/spoiler]
